Unofficial news and tips about Google

June 9, 2009

Google Translator Toolkit

Google Translator Toolkit is a new service that lets you translate documents by editing the translations automatically generated by Google. "Google Translator Toolkit allows human translators to work faster and more accurately, aided by technologies like Google Translate."

You can translate documents stored on your computer, web pages, Wikipedia articles and Knol articles. After importing a document, Google generates the translation, displaying it next to the original text. You can select a sentence from the original document and Google lets you edit the translation.

Google Translator Toolkit includes the collaborative features from Google Docs: you can invite other people to edit or view your translations, but the application doesn't display the collaborators that are currently editing a document.

An interesting feature is the "translation memory", a database of already-existing translations. "As you translate new sentences, we automatically search all available translation memories for previous translations similar to your new sentence. If such sentences exist, we rank and then show them to you. Comparing your translation to previous human translations improves consistency and saves you time: you can reuse previous translations or adjust them to create new, more contextually appropriate translations."

Google's service will make it easier to translate documents online, but it's also a great way to improve the quality of the machine translation service.

I'd prefer to see the translations improved dramatically before rolling more tools out to the public. I would have to imagine the English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English translations are the most popular here in the U.S., and even those translations are terrible most of the time.

I commend Google for offering the service. It needs a lot of improvement, though.

The "translate for Wikipedia" feature is very nice. This tool is very good for freelance translators such as myself (I get my translation requests from OneHourTranslation.com) and will use the tool for sure. Keep in mind all those translation memories tools are still not replacement for the human mind!

In order to obtain really good (comparable to human expert) translations of entire documents, you have to give up the notion that each sentence in the source language translates to exactly one sentence in the target language. Language is not that simple. Perhaps you can split a target sentence into two or delete a target sentence, but for serious translation I guess it would be desirable to be able to edit larger fragments beyond a single sentence.

This service is a total and indecent RIP-OFF! The Google guys will use cost-free translation memories and glossaries to perfect a product that will bring direct or indirect income to them. I, as a professional translator, am truly appalled.

I am very disappointed by near zero progress in development of this tool. It seems that project was friezed about year ago in relatively poor state and now resuscitated. Tool interface seems to be not yet very comfortable. Also Idea to propagate in public "crippled" version with only english as source language is very bad! Potential of this type of tool seems to be very big, so I absolutely dont understand whay it is scamped this way....

Google is providing this service for free, we should not forget that,if it was paid i can understand people complaining, but free service is free service, its your choice to use it.I thing the translation software is still in beta version.Lets give them time, and feedback so that google can improve the web world.Regardshttp://www.webworldguru.com

The same service already exists for almost 2 years on the web. Traduwiki.org is a translation tool designed for group and organization purposes. Functionalities are the same. Google isn't innovating on this one.

Many documents translated by professional translators must remain confidential. The language may be neutral but the information contained is never. Translators using Google translation toolkit need to know that anything translated using this service can be accessed and known by anybody. Besides, we will all be working for Google free. Again, there is no free lunch!

Be careful with your settings. I wanted to translate from French into English. It asked my location so I said I was in the US and it restricted my translations from English into any language. I cannot reverse this so I have to create a new Google Account so I can translate from French into any language. Crazy.

This "translator toolkit" would make a much better work with Esperanto available in field "from", because Esperanto is inherently more precise than English. I like the overall idea that translators help eachother, but not the choice of English as the pivot language.

EduCaramba says in english,Guys, I just read that many of you where a bit frustrated with the fact that source language available is english only... I agree that is a glitch/like pre-set, that should be changed because it assumes that user wants to translate from english only to other languages. Guess what AstralisLux, I did what you recommended and wasted my time opening a new account because it did not help... the language source remains english. Good news are that google has another tool that allows us to select source language instead using google translator kit, you can use the generic translate.google at translate google. Hey you do not have to thank me for figuring this one out, just follow me at twitter and stay connected to me and my daily international education discoveries. at twitter.com/educaramba

How to integrate Google Translator to automatically translate each pages you write on your blogger. I need this because when people search my site http://cheap-activation.com in any language it will appear according to the language they search

While I use commercial TM, I've been using this tool for a while beceause I like taking my translations everywhere and like the idea of using a free service that I do not have to pay upgrades for. While it is not the best out there right now, it is innovative in the sense that there a large pool of translations out there that you can use -- but I would be weary of these as I have found mistakes.

But most importantly, I use this tool for consistency purposes. Also, never never use the automatic translation tool that uses computer translation. Make sure you have that turned off on your settings. I forgot to change the translation given by the computer once and delivered it to the client as it was!

Wow, it is an excellent tool! The only problem is that it doesn't work with google docs. While google docs can do the translation it would be much better to be able to open the translation toolkit and there fine polish the translation.It is weird for the toolkit to be able to translate wiki pages, word and open office documents but not being able to work with the google docs.Please integrate the two!

I want to translate a document which I wrote in Hindi,to English.I saved this document in word-processor file with other documents. How can I translate it in English. I dont know how to download the toolkit.

I just want to say few words.Google is providing this service for free, and we should not forget this fact,if it was paid i can understand people complaining about it , but this service is free, its your choice to use it or not.